Carine Werner, Arizona State Senator

Monday, June 29, 2026 | 24:29

Seeing Democrats and Republicans work together “really well” — even “collaboratively" — in an election year, is not only encouraging, but it can also give you faith in our system of government. Too bad that getting to this place politically requires tackling an issue awful enough that it can cause one to lose faith in humanity.   Republican state Senator Carine Werner told me on the AZ Political Podcast this week that Arizona’s child welfare system is so broken that trying to reform it was daunting and an all-hands-on-deck (Rs and Ds) approach was necessary. And so were 13 new laws.   Werner fills us in on what those laws attempt to reform and fix: the Department of Child Safety (DCS); runaway prevention; foster care group home supervision; cooperation between the state of Arizona and the state’s sovereign tribes; and how the abuse of children is reported as well as how those reports are received — and acted upon.   But Werner feels there’s more work to be done, saying, “We don’t want to take our eyes off the ball, we want to continue to work on this.”    One of the things she says she’d like to undertake in the next legislative session is staffing, retention, and pay for DCS workers. She knows the job they do leads to high burnout, leaving DCS with little institutional knowledge to train the next generation of workers.   There’s no way this gets fixed overnight, but if you’d like to insert a dose of hope in your life by hearing how there are people who actually care about what happens to Arizona’s most vulnerable children — and then sprinkle on a little extra hope by seeing that our elected leaders can work together when necessary — please take the time to watch this edition of the AZ Political Podcast.